The Name I Call Myself (27 page)

“You felt happy? Stuck up to your waist in that mud?” Uzma boggled.

“I felt happy 'cos I knew I wasn't alone. I knew you'd get me out. All that time, that whole walk, I'd been scared in case something scary happened. But I didn't need to be scared. You were here. All of you. My friends. My sisters. You didn't leave me. I didn't need to be scared any more.”

I thought about what April had told me about her family – her destructive relationship with her mum, leaving home to kip on friends' sofas, no job, no security, no one. Until she fell in love with a seriously ill man-child fighting a drug and alcohol addiction. And then he left her, too.

I mentally threw some more of my petty, ugly jealousy back over the gate and into the depths of that swamp right then and there. Squelching my caked feet across the path, I pulled her into a hug.

“You're not alone, sister. Don't be scared.”

“I could say the same thing to you,” she laughed, pressing her stinky face against mine.

Marilyn swivelled round and pointed one finger at Hester. “Did you plan this?”

Hester patted her head, every spotless hair in place. Was it actually a helmet? Made of some space-age dirt-resistant technology? “I'm choosing not to answer that question. But you know by now I do nothing without asking my boss first.”

“What, Dylan?” Rowan asked. “Dylan planned this?”

Rosa rolled her eyes. “She means God, Rowan.”

Some decades later, around midnight, we stumbled back into camp. Soggy, chafed, blistered, and utterly jubilant as we sang another round of musical classics. The notes our half-frozen lungs and exhausted voices produced were no longer pitch-perfect, or even in time. It sounded fantastic.

Every one of us slept for eight straight hours.
I
slept for eight straight hours. No nightmares, no sweats, no chattering teeth nor trembling bones. I was not alone. I was with my friends. My sisters. I was safe.

The sheep bleating in my ear woke me up. Either that or the sound of it ripping off a chunk of my sleeping bag.

Up close, sheep are massive.

Massive and filthy, smelly and sharp-hooved and massive.

Momentarily forgetting my friends, my sisters, not being alone and all that, I nearly peed my thermal pants.

“Sheep!” Marilyn called, from the other side of the tent.

“No kidding,” I growled back. “Got any bright ideas?”

“I have to get Nancy and Pete out. Sorry. Mother's instinct.”

There was a rustle as she scrambled for the entrance, a baby in a mini sleeping bag under each arm.

“Rosa? Melody?” I called feebly to my tent-mates. “Did you know there's a sheep in the tent?”

A bleary-eyed Rosa poked her head out of her blanket. “It's a sheep. I think it eat your sleeping bag.”

“Yes. It's also blocking my exit. I'm stuck here until it moves.”

“Did you try shooing it away? Like this,
shoo, shoo.
” She made a flapping motion with her hands. “Or like this.” She clambered to her feet and shooed again, waving her blanket up and down.

The sheep gazed at her across the tent before bending its head and taking another mouthful of my bed.

“Hang on. I go get a weapon. We can beat it out of the tent.”

Beat it out? With its hooves pinning my sleeping bag to the ground?

“Melody,” I called out, causing the sheep to waggle its head in my direction.

“Yes, my darling?” she replied, from within her separate compartment.

“There's a sheep eating my sleeping bag.”

“Well, that doesn't sound very good. I wouldn't let it get away with that if I were you.”

“I don't think I have any choice in the matter.”

Silence.

“Are you coming to help me?”

I heard a zipping noise, but Melody's door into the main tent remained closed.

“Mel? Melody?”

My teammate, friend, and spiritual sister had scarpered out of the back entrance.

At that moment, I paused to consider how the sheep had got inside in the first place. Carefully, keeping the rest of my body still, I rolled my head to look behind me.

Yikes!

Another sheep, staring at me through an enormous rip in the back seam. Wearing a yellow and pink striped bobble hat.

I was surrounded.

And judging by the yelps and baas now erupting from all directions, I wasn't the only one.

Rosa poked her head back in through the tent flap. Her arm followed, clutching a mop.

“Here. Whack it with this. On the nose. It will soon be getting the message and coming out of there.”

“Yes. Either that or it will lose its temper, bite my face, and make a smoothie out of my internal organs as it tramples me to death.”

“Faith. It is a sheep. You need to do your breathing exercise. Then show it who is boss.”

“We both know I'm not the boss.”

“I do not know that!”

“I meant me and the sheep.”

“Oh for mercy's sake! I come in there right now to sort this out.”

“Wait! Let me get out of this bag first.”

But every time I tried, the sheep began to wave its head around in agitation, moving closer rather than further away from my all-too-squashable head. In the end, after I stopped moving for what felt like an hour at least, it stepped off the sleeping bag. I hastily wiggled past and out of the entrance, like a caterpillar sneaking out of a bird's nest, and feeling just as vulnerable.

Straight into a scene out of a post-apocalyptic movie. Planet of the Sheep.

Tent one – admittedly our first, and therefore worst, attempt at pitching – was no longer upright. Tent three had a sheep standing in the entrance, chewing on a guy rope. The wet coats we had strung up to dry between a couple of trees now lay on the damp grass, all except for April's parka, which one sheep now wore on its back.

Uzma reckoned that with a pair of dark glasses it could pass for a '90s rock star.

The food supply, safely stored in tent one, now lay trampled across the clearing in various states of dishevelment.

“Honestly.” Leona snatched a packet of crumpets from the mouth of one of the smaller beasts and nearly got her fingers nipped off. “You can eat grass. Look around, you dumb animals. It's all around you. More than you could ever need. Grass, grass, and more grass. We, however, cannot eat grass. We needed that loaf of bread. And you didn't even
eat
the butter. You just trod on it.”

And the droppings? Someone needed to teach those animals how to use a trowel.

After a stressful hour herding the sheep into the next field, before cobbling together a makeshift barricade out of a fallen tree trunk, Hester rallied our soggy spirits by declaring an emergency trip to the nearest pub for hot food and running water. Some of the group didn't even bother getting changed, shoving on a jumper and wellies over their pyjamas before diving into the cars.

We sat in the pub like a bunch of wild women, plates loaded up from the breakfast bar as though we hadn't eaten a decent meal for a month. Whew. And I knew what that felt like. Glancing around at my cohorts, with their messy hair, grass-stained onesies, stale swamp stink, and smudged faces, I suspected some of them might know that feeling, too.

“Now I know why celebrities are so thin,” Rowan declared, around a mouthful of limp bacon. “The more you slum it, the better food tastes. Rich people probably don't even notice what their breakfast tastes like. I bet some of them don't even have breakfast. Faith, does Perry eat breakfast?”

I nodded. “Yes. He eats granola with fruit and yoghurt.”

“See. It's in our genes. If you're warm and dry, you're fine eating fruit. If you wake up in a sodden tracksuit 'cos a sheep's eaten your bedroom door, your body needs grease. It's like ‘
Dude! I'm going to need more fat deposits to keep warm in these conditions'.
”

“You're not rich, Rowan, and you're tiny.”

“Yeah. Well. I can't usually afford breakfast.” She glanced up, suddenly embarrassed. “At least, I don't usually have time to eat it. What with getting Callie ready for nursery and starting college and everything.”

“How's that going?” I asked.

“Not bad, actually. It's not like school. I call the teacher by his first name, and he talks to me like I'm a normal person, not a deadbeat. He says if I keep it up I can get a C first time.”

“And then your beauty course?”

She nodded proudly. “Sherwood College say I can start in September if I pass maths and English. I just need to figure out how to pay for the fees.”

“Would you like me to see if I can get you some waitressing shifts?”

She shrugged. “Maybe once Callie's at school full time. For now, it'll be enough to leave her with my mum while I'm training. Thanks anyway. Hester says if it's meant to be, something'll come up.”

“I'll add you to my prayers,” I blurted.

She beamed in surprise. I felt a little surprised myself. What prayers? Help, God, please don't let Kane get me or my brother? And please stop me feeling attracted to a man other than my nice fiancé?

I took a swig of tea in an attempt to quench the prickle of anxiety pointing out that here, sat in a grubby pub in yesterday's underwear with a group of women resembling a Neanderthal tribe, I felt more part of the family than I did nibbling on smoked salmon at HCC with those I would soon be legally related to.

When we returned to the field, the first thing I noticed was a bubblegum pink Mini parked up with the rest of the cars. Once Marilyn pulled over, I saw the bunting stretching between several trees towards the far side of the clearing. And balloons. A lot of pink balloons.

As I climbed out and started walking over to the wreckage of the tents, two pink people jumped out from behind a large oak tree.

“Surprise!” Natasha and Catherine were wearing pink wigs, pink cowgirl hats, pink wellies, and pink T-shirts that said “Faith's Final Fling!” in swirly, glittery letters.

“What?” I stood there, gaping like the fish out of water I knew I was about to become.

“Surprise!” they squealed again, flapping their hands about. “It's your hen do!”

“But I'm not having a hen do.”

“Wrong, Faith. You
totally
are!”

I swivelled my head to face Marilyn, my matron of honour and therefore the one in charge of making sure I didn't have a hen do. She grinned at me. “Outnumbered, outmanoeuvred, and outvoted.”

“What about this being
my
wedding? Where I get to decide what does
and doesn't
happen?” I hissed.

“That only counts where you're right. When you're being an idiot we get to overrule.”

“Yes!” Natasha tipped out a bag of matching T-shirts onto the
grass. “Outnumbered, outvoted, outmanoeuvred, and overruled. We are going to give you the best. Hen do. Ever.”

My heart slipped down my trouser leg and plopped onto the grass in a sorry heap. Oh boy.

The itinerary for the best hen do ever?

To start with, a high-rise climbing, swinging, treetops, monkey-type “adventure”. A stroll in the woods compared to our adventures the night before. Only Marilyn tried to back out, and that was because she couldn't believe she came under the weight restriction. Having worked herself up into a nervous frenzy when we arrived, the instructor didn't even blink at her size. I thought back to the rock climbing trip, where she had sat on the sidelines with Polly. It was fantastic that Marilyn had energy now, was fitter and stronger and healthier. But more than that, those months of sweat and tears and aching muscles and utter exhaustion with Anton had enabled her to become a fully participating member of life again. Take that, sidelines! It's the sidelines' turn to sit on the sidelines now!

I slung an arm around her shoulder. “I should charge you for all the extra dress material Rosa's going to have to throw away.”

“This hen do T-shirt is a medium. I've lost so much weight I'm medium. In the middle. Non-large.” She tugged at the top in disbelief.

“It's what you've gained that makes the difference.”

“I'm going to smash everybody on this course. Even those gym-honed posh girls.” She grinned.

“Everybody except me. You have to let the bride win, of course.”

“I have to do no such thing. What, one hour into your hen do and you've gone bridezilla on me? Save the attitude for your mother-in-law.”

“Speaking of Larissa, why isn't she here?” I looked around, as if expecting her to appear out of the trees. “I'd have liked to see her dangling off that bungee thing. Given her a helping shove down the zip wire.”

“Unfortunately, the date clashed with her annual Lady Rosalind
Institute reunion.” Marilyn shook her head in mock woe.

“Coincidence.”

“No-incidence. Today has been planned with military precision. No attention spared to detail.”

We reached the first obstacle, where the rest of the choir waited for me to lead the way.

I gave Marilyn a kiss on the cheek and whispered, “Thank you for ignoring my instructions. You go ahead and leave me happily eating your dust.”

By the time we had finished the course, eaten a picnic lunch sprawled on blankets in the sunshine, and limped back to base, we felt optimistic enough to construct a bonfire. The afternoon was spent wandering around scouting out dry wood, clearing up the sheep damage, and munching on the cakes Natasha and Catherine had brought along. Kim and Rowan got out their cosmetic bags and had a go at untangling our rat's-nests and scrubbing up our outdoor faces. Not a lot they could do about the smell, but we were getting used to it.

“Are we going out later, then?” Yasmin asked, as Kim painted her nails for her in different colours.

“This is about as out as you can get,” I smiled, waving at the countryside.

“No. I mean out, like in out where other people are.”

“We're not,” Catherine answered. “Why would we want to go anywhere else when we've got a rockin' group of women right here? Sitting under the stars with a bonfire, marshmallows, and Natasha's party playlist on her iPod…”

“Yeah. No shelter, no toilet, and no chairs… What more could a girl ask for?” Rowan looked up from brushing Leona's hair.

“I think the plan is to be back in your own beds tonight. Hester asked the church minister guy to come and pick the gear up at about eleven.”

“Dylan?” Yasmin smirked. “So there's at least someone to get dolled up for then.”

Kim pointed the nail polish brush at her. “You know better than that. Aren't we supposed to have learned we don't need a man to get dolled up for? Besides” – she pulled a sly smile, looking down and pretending to concentrate on Yasmin's fingernails – “I think for all of the women here, our appearance will go right over Dylan's head. Except for one. And she could wear a second-hand bin bag and he'd not be able to take his dreamy eyes off her.” Half the women within hearing distance froze. The others jerked their heads towards Kim.

Apart from me, that is. I reacted by turning crimson and busying myself with choosing a shade of lipstick while pretending to ignore the awkward giggles. Had she really just said that? At my hen do?

“Get on with it, then,” Yasmin urged Kim on, trying to change the subject. “Haven't you seen the state of my cuticles?”

I gave my engagement ring a squeeze, reminded myself that Dylan's behaviour had been entirely appropriate, up to and including the gate non-incident. Men didn't fist bump people they fancied, did they? He's a minister, for goodness' sake! I was ridiculous, over-analysing every look and smile, reinterpreting the kind words Dylan used all the time, and transferring my own stupid emotions onto his entirely rational ones. Once Perry had returned from wherever he was this week, and we were able to spend a bit more time together, my feelings would return to normal in good time for the wedding.